Rare joint effort between Pakistan, Israel helps Afghan children: report

KABUL: With Afghanistan unable to treat the potentially deadly eye cancer retinoblastoma, Israel’s Sheba Medical Center initiated and is funding a programme to transport Afghan children with the disease into Pakistan for treatment, foreign media reported.

Children in Afghanistan are being given a chance to survive a potentially deadly eye cancer through an extraordinary international effort led by an Israeli team working with medical centers in Pakistan. Neither Pakistan nor Afghanistan has formal diplomatic relations with Israel.

Doctors from Sheba Medical Center, Israel’s biggest hospital, teamed up with Pakistani medical centers to create the Retinoblastoma Silk Road Program, in which Afghan children diagnosed with the deadly cancer are transported over the border into Pakistan for lifesaving treatment.

Retinoblastoma is a rare malignant eye cancer most commonly found in young children up to age 5. In high-income countries, where children with the disease can receive a variety of treatments, almost all survive, although many lose the affected eye. However, in low-income countries, survival rates are below 50%. The World Health Organization is aiming for a 60% global survival rate by 2030.

In Afghanistan, about 100 new cases of the cancer are diagnosed every year, but the country lacks the medical infrastructure to administer the necessary treatments. Prof. Ido (Didi) Fabian, an expert in ocular tumor treatment at the Sheba Medical Center, spearheaded the effort to transport Afghan children with the disease into Pakistan for treatment. He had been conducting a study into the cancer in 2017 when he noticed a particularly strong need for help in Afghanistan.

However, after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 2021, it became much more difficult for Afghans to obtain permission to leave the country. Fabian felt he had to help and saw an opportunity to transport children and their families into Pakistan to receive treatment.

Fabian coordinated with doctors from several Pakistani medical centers but ended up working primarily with the Children’s Hospital in Lahore, Pakistan’s second-largest city. “For all those patients who are diagnosed with retinoblastoma in Afghanistan, unfortunately, local facilities are not available to offer treatment for these little kids. The treatment is readily available here in Pakistan,” said Dr. Huma Zafar, a pediatric oncologist with the Children’s Hospital.

Because of the hurdles Afghans face when traveling, Fabian requested and received funding from the Sheba Medical Center to organize three teams. The first is a Sheba team based in Israel that helps coordinate the program. The second team, in Afghanistan, is tasked with driving the children and their families to the capital, Kabul, to obtain special permission to enter Pakistan for medical treatment. That team then drives the families to the Pakistani border. At the border, on the Pakistani side, the third team receives them, delivers them to Lahore, and finds accommodation for them during the treatment period.

“Accommodation issues and other logistics—traveling and staying here for a long, long time—these were a few challenges with the families we were already facing,” Zafar said.